


After Every Hit We Take

by LadyShadowphyre



Series: SoMaA: Sam Squared [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canonical Temporary Character Death, Implied Castiel/Samael, M/M, Offscreen character death, Sam Winchester Has Powers, Sam Winchester is Called Samael, Samcest, Selfcest Kissing, Ye Olde Archangel History Redux, major series spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-03 15:04:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21181427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyShadowphyre/pseuds/LadyShadowphyre
Summary: Sam hadn’t expected to see himself again, the him who was an angel and could unlock his powers from Azazel’s control with a bloody kiss. Then he woke up in a dark room after having been stabbed in the back in a demon-guarded ghost town with a doppleganger for company.





	After Every Hit We Take

**Author's Note:**

> **Written for Heaven & Hell Bingo square:** Resurrection  
**Written for Bad Things Happen Bingo square:** Stabbing  
**Written for SPN Song Challenge Bingo square:** "I Hate Everything About You" by Three Days Grace  
**Written for Sam Winchester Bingo square:** Grace Kink

**S**AM OPENED HIS eyes to a dark and unfamiliar room. He expected to feel pain, to feel the pull of aching muscles and the gnawing in his stomach from hunger, to feel the pain of the wound where Jake Talley had literally stabbed him in the back... but there was nothing. He felt relaxed, rested, unhurt by bruise or blade, and his stomach was silent. The bed beneath him creaked when he moved to sit up, but the sound brought no exclamations or flood of light from Dean the way he'd half-expected. He was alone.

"Not entirely."

Sam whipped his head around to stare through the gloom in the direction of the voice, familiar and not in the way a dream is familiar when you've had that dream before. It shouldn't have been a surprise when his eyes adjusted and he saw who was standing against the wall, but he still felt the air being punched out of him in shock. "You!"

"Me," the other Sam nodded. "And you. Do we need to have the same conversation as last time?"

"Do we have a time limit this time?" Sam bit out, scrubbing a hand over his face, scrambling to collect his thoughts. He'd been sure that he'd never see his other self - the older one with the strange powers who called himself Samael and spoke of angels - again, and now that he was there were questions he needed answers to.

"We do, but it's okay," Samael was saying. "It'll take Dean about an hour to get back here from the crossroads."

Sam froze.

_ Crossroads.... _

"Jake killed me, didn't he," he whispered, swallowing. "Dean sold his soul for me."

"He did," Samael said, a million years of regret in his voice. "He'll try to pretend that he didn't, that Jake missed anything vital and you just passed out from exhaustion and shock, but it's stupid of him and neither of you have time for miscommunications right now."

"How much time?" Sam demanded, fear gripping him as he remembered how quickly the yellow-eyed demon had taken his dad when John sold his soul for Dean. "How long--"

"A year," Samael told him. "And don't think you can get him out of it. A condition of the deal, one he won't tell you even after he admits that he's done it, is that if he tries to get out of it at all then you die again. You know Dean, you know he won't accept that price as worth the risk."

"Can you do anything?" Sam asked desperately, then winced as he heard the echo from his other self. Other Sam was looking at him with pained sorrow that ripped at Sam's insides.

"I wish I could," Samael said. "You, out of everyone, might stand a chance at understanding just how much I wish I could spare you from everything that's coming."

"But you can't," Sam guessed, feeling numbness beginning to creep in.

"But I can't," Samael agreed. He approached the bed now, sitting down on the edge next to Sam's knees. "Some things are too deeply set in motion for one person to change and Dean's deal is one of those things. The best I could do was heal you up - the demons didn't bother with that part of your resurrection - and answer as many questions as you can think of in the next hour while passing along a few warnings."

"The wards--"

"Are up," Samael assured him. "You drilled them into Dean well. He and Bobby put them up when they got here, and he hasn't removed them."

Sam let out the breath that had jumped into his lungs and scrubbed a hand through his hair. "I... the yellow-eyed demon said something...."

"That it was harder to find you than he thought it should have been?" Samael said in that knowing way he had that Sam had almost forgotten about. "I was afraid of that. The sulfur taint may be gone from your blood thanks to mine, but we still share the same blood. Azazel's marker wouldn't have been erased by my Grace, no matter how much I might wish otherwise."

"Azazel?"

"Yellow-Eyes."

"Right, you mentioned that last time, sorry," Sam muttered. So much of that first conversation had faded in the year since it had happened, Sam was honestly amazed he hadn't forgotten it completely. If not for the wards and the warnings about his powers, he might have anyway. Though speaking of his powers.... "You weren't kidding when you said my powers would go nuts without Yello-- _ Azazel's _ 'control lever' in place."

"Your powers _ are _ the strongest out of all of your cousins," Samael told him. "Perks of being from the main branch of the bloodlines, for all the good it does us."

"_Cousins_," Sam repeated.

"Distant cousins," Samael amended. "Azazel wasn't picking his 'special children' randomly. He was following the patterns of two distinct bloodlines and activating the children born where the bloodlines converged."

"He said the winner was supposed to be his general, the leader of a demon army," Sam said, mind racing. "And another demon called me 'boy king' like I was supposed to rule Hell or something. But...."

"It's definitely the 'or something'," Samael sighed. "And it comes back to the bloodlines thing, which I'll explain if you promise not to interrupt or throw accusations at me until I'm done."

"Okay," Sam agreed, trying not to let his suspicion show. Samael shot him another of those knowing looks, making Sam flush and scowl. "Promise," he gritted out. "Explain now."

Samael explained. Sam remained silent as the being wearing his face talked about two Archangels, Mikha'el and Samael, who were the closest of brothers even closer than the other Archangels and far more so than all the rest of the Host. How they had special bloodlines for True Vessels - humans who could handle being possessed by an Archangel indefinitely instead of being burned out by the force and power of their Grace - that traced their lineage back to Kayin and Hevel, sons of Adam and Chawwah, the Man and Woman of lore who had been lifted up into the Garden and set before the angels by their Father who said to bow to humanity, for they were His greatest creation.

Samael went on to explain how an argument between the Archangel brothers had resulted in Samael cutting out his Grace and Falling to be reborn as a human so that he could see for himself if humanity was really as awesome as his Father claimed, and how, without Samael's soul and moral higher functions to keep it in check, the semi-autonomous Grace had become corrupted and the fighting got worse until that Grace was cast down into Hell and, from there, locked away in a Cage with six hundred and sixty-six Seals to hold it closed until the Apocalypse was due. How Mikha'el had, in his grief, done exactly as Samael had and cut out his Grace, leaving it behind as a soulless automaton while he was reborn as a human. How their Father had left Heaven, going only He knew where, leaving Heaven with only two of three fully functional Archangels to lead them. How, with Samael on Earth as a human and his Grace locked away in the Cage and no one but the equally split Mikha'el the wiser of that fact, Rafa'el had lashed out at Gavri'el and driven him away from Heaven, then set to work on pushing for the Apocalypse to happen on a much faster schedule, to get things over with in the hope that either their Father would come back and fix things or that everything would finally be over and done with. And how, with the union of Mary Campbell of Hevel's lineage and John Winchester of Kayin's producing first Dean and then Sam, brothers on Earth to mirror the brothers who had been in Heaven, the True Vessels of the Apocalypse were born.

With a rueful smile, Samael then spoke of how he remembered things going in another universe, different from Sam's and even from the one where Samael existed as he was now. How no one, not even Samael himself, had known that Sam Winchester was yet another reincarnation of Samael the Archangel until well after all the Seals had broken and "Lucifer" had been freed from the Cage, corrupted and without anchor, to seek out a vessel and follow the script that had been laid out for it like a "good little automaton" while Sam and Dean struggled to try and fix what they had inadvertently broken. How the plan had come down to Sam saying "yes" to "Lucifer" and letting the Grace possess him, then taking back control and jumping into the Cage. How he nearly hadn't managed it, human and frightened and stubborn and clueless as he was, but that Dean and the Impala and his love for them had helped his soul assert control at last. How he had jumped into the Cage, fully intending to never surface again. And how, inside the Cage, his soul and Grace had slowly, agonizingly slowly, knit itself back together again and allowed him to process a multitude of lifetimes of memories stretching back aeons, and how he had laughed long and hard and bitterly over the realization of the truth that now _ all _ of him was locked in the Cage as the angels had once believed.

Pained, he spoke of Dean, left above on Earth and aching with the separation between him and Sam that ran soul-deep because, just as no one had realized that Sam was Samael, no one had recognized Mikha'el in Dean. How Dean had made a deal with Death to get Sam out of the Cage "without Lucifer", not knowing that Lucifer was gone and only Samael remained. How Death, skilled at Reaping souls, had been far less skilled with the precision of separating soul from Grace, Samael's expression warning Sam that it had probably been more agony than he wanted to know. How Death had brought back his soul, flayed open and stripped raw from his brutally efficient surgery, back to Earth to be reunited with his body and Dean, and had put up a mental block around the damage and all the memories he had from the Cage. That the wall had been broken - Sam noticed he didn't specify how - which had nearly driven him insane from the pain of his soul that his human mind could only make sense of in strange hallucinations and twisted memories of torture and pain. How that pain had been shifted - again, he was evasive about how - which had slowly allowed him to sort through the memories and figure out who he was. How he felt he couldn't talk to Dean about any of it for several years until something Big happened - again with the evasions! - and his Father had come back. And how his Father had sent Samael, still Sam, back in time to a point where their universe was experiencing a concentrated temporal flux, Sam's presence and his determination to change things splitting the timeline and creating the universe Samael had come from.

"And before you think of it," he added with a deep sigh, "I'm not lying to you in order to make it easier for Lucifer to take you as a vessel in this universe. I'd actually hoped that, by taking away the Hell taint from your blood, I might be able to alter the course of this timeline even sooner and keep it all from happening. I forgot about Azazel still being able to follow the blood, even if the ties to Hell were weakened by my Grace."

"So why are you here now?" Sam asked when Samael fell silent and looked at him expectantly. "I mean, obviously some things have changed even if Azazel still found me. What's the point of coming now?"

"It begins here, with your death and Dean's deal," Samael told him. "Heaven and Hell need Dean down on the racks so that he'll be in position to break the First Seal. After that, Heaven will send a squad of angels to retrieve him, since Michael can't exactly take him as a vessel the way they believe he will if his soul's in Hell and can't consent. Then Lilith - I mentioned her before - she'll start breaking other Seals until sixty-five have been broken. Her death in an old convent will break the sixty-sixth and Final Seal needed to open the Cage and release 'Lucifer'. You need to be as forewarned as possible before Dean goes to Hell, but you can't tell Dean most of this until he gets back topside or the demons could learn everything."

"Would it be so bad if they know?" Sam asked. "Not just the demons, but the angels?"

"I don't know," Samael admitted. "I'm not keen on risking it, though. Remember, Michael is just as much of a soulless automaton as Lucifer, Gabriel's in hiding, and Raphael is barely holding the Host together and desperate for everything to end... one way or another."

"What if Dean took back his Grace before his deal was up?"

"It wouldn't cancel the deal, just lock Michael into it Grace and all, but as an Archangel he wouldn't be able to break the First Seal since that has to be done by a human who is a righteous man. Heaven might still launch a rescue party or he could bust himself out, but then he's an Archangel again and you're stuck as a human until Hell finds some other righteous sucker to use to break the Seal and get the ball rolling." Samael raised his eyebrows at Sam. "And Dean would be stuck up in Heaven sorting out the mess Raphael's made. Alone. With paperwork."

"You're saying he'd go crazy and try to restart the ball on the Apocalypse himself to get me back?" Sam asked, wishing he really felt as skeptical and incredulous as he sounded. Because he could see it too easily, Dean chafing under the tedium and monotony of paperwork in Heaven just as he had so often chafed under the restrictions of having to play "normal" back before he turned eighteen and could legally ditch school to go on hunts or explore or even just go down to the bar and play pool while he waited for Sam to be done with classes. He still remembered how Dean had told him that even though he could do this alone, without Sam, he didn't want to.

"When we died in Dean's arms in Cold Oak and Jake ran off as the winner of Azazel's little tournament," Samael said quietly, "Bobby tried to get Dean to move, to go after Jake and stop him. Tried to get him to let us go, because the world was burning. Dean said to let it burn. And then he sold his soul for us. He doesn't remember being my Mikha, just like you don't remember being me, but growing up together with that bond between your souls getting stronger and stronger? He can't give you up, Sam. He doesn't know how."

"So what do we do now?" Sam asked as he slumped, defeated. If Samael was telling the truth, then Dean was going to be dead and in Hell in a year, and Sam knew himself well enough to realize that if Dean would let the world burn without Sam, well, how could he do any less for Dean?

"Now, I give you a list of specific Seals that I remember and several more that I found out about later," Samael said. "There's too many to even hope to protect all of them, but at the least you should be able to save a lot of people by heading Lilith off on certain Seals or knowing exactly how to fix things if some of them break anyway. Speaking of Lilith, she's going to be coming after you and Dean, so you need to know who to watch out for and who to get out of her way."

"I thought you said Dean gets a year!" Sam yelped.

"Well, sure, he gets as much as a year and then the hellhounds come for him," Samael said, making the blood drain from Sam's face. "Yeah. Besides, Lilith wants you both running scared, desperate, willing to do anything and trust anybody that tells you they can get Dean out of his deal, willing to do anything to save him, and primed to be set on the path of unswerving vengeance against her so you'll be a good little pawn and kill her when the time comes. If she gets to drag Dean to Hell early and maybe get that first Seal broken all the sooner, she probably figures that's a bonus."

"Desperate and trusting, huh?" Sam said, narrowing his eyes. Samael rolled his own.

"I'm not trying to tell you I can get Dean out of his deal," the Archangel told him. "In fact, I've already said I can't. Besides," he added with a slight smirk, "if you can't trust yourself not to lie to you...."

"Who _ can _ you trust?" Sam finished with a snort. It was ten kinds of crazy, but everything in him was telling him that Samael spoke the truth. Still, he hesitated. "You really want to try and stop the Apocalypse?"

"I like the Earth," Samael said simply. "I like _ people _ . Sure, some of them are grade A assholes, but some of them are kinder and more loving people than what Pastor Jim told us angels were supposed to be. But mostly? They're just people, good and bad, balanced between the two each in their own way and living their lives the best they know how. Besides, with the number of fixed points in the timeline, it's pretty much inevitable that you'll go back to being Samael eventually, but you don't have to be _ me _." That pained look was back, the one he'd worn when speaking of that other timeline that he remembered but no longer lived in. "I don't want you to have to be me."

"Fair enough," Sam nodded in acceptance. "How much time do we have before Dean gets back?"

Samael's eyes unfocused and he cocked his head to one side as if listening to something, then grimaced. "Not enough. I'll have to give you the information directly."

"You're not going to have to kiss me again, are you?" Sam joked. That had been weird, even without the strange-tasting blood that had been pushed into his mouth at the time, but what had been the most weird about it was that the kiss itself hadn't felt weird at all. Dean would probably have told him he was taking "self-love" too far, which was why he hadn't told his brother about that bit. Samael gave him a sidelong look and a small smirk.

"Did you want me to?" he parried playfully. A moment later, he looked thoughtful. "Actually, that might be the most efficient way to do it. Connect our souls and my Grace and just do a direct file transfer. You might end up with a headache, but--"

"But that's hardly anything new after the way things have been since last time when you broke the locks and turned on all the lights," Sam finished. "Fine, let's get it over with."

"Such enthusiasm," Samael snorted, and leaned in as Sam reached up and met him halfway.

From a purely physical standpoint, this kiss was a lot better than the first one. This time, Sam was the one cupping Samael's face with his hand while the Archangel's hand rested on his knee. Their lips brushed together, parted, then slid together more firmly, interlocking like perfectly aligned puzzle pieces in a way no other kiss Sam had ever experienced could. Then the warmth came, a flood of energy that tingled along his nerves and across his awareness that his powers had only magnified, pouring in through their joined lips and skittering and sparking and dancing across his synapses, writing new information directly into his brain before retreating again as Samael gently broke the kiss with a soft sigh.

The pain hit a breath later, a series of sharp stabs lancing through different parts of his brain that left him gasping and clinging to Samael as he struggled to push through the agony. Samael's arms came up around him, holding him against his chest and stroking his back as he trembled. Softly, the Archangel began to hum, and then to sing, just a simple melody with words that encompassed whole concepts in simple stanzas. Sam focused on the melody like a lifeline, breathing in time with the music, and gradually the pain faded enough that he was able to recognize the tune... and then he blinked, because he shouldn't know that tune at all, or understand the lyrics.

"Did you... download an Enochian dictionary into my head?" he asked, blinking his eyes open.

"It'll come in handy later," Samael promised him, squeezing gently before pulling back and giving Sam yet another shock. "I also went ahead and unlocked that ability to see things like demonic true forms and hellhounds and--"

"Angel wings," Sam breathed, staring over Samael's shoulder. Because that's what he was seeing, and there was no mistaking them for anything else. The three pairs of huge feathered wings were resting halfway open and curved forward around them both in a blatant display of protection and affection that Sam had no reason to recognize but did, intangible and phasing through the bed without any problems but still seeming so very solid and real and vibrant with their glowing greens and golds and the faintest tinges of blue up against the barest edges of black along the primaries and feather shafts. Sam swallowed. Hearing that Samael was an Archangel, even believing it, was completely different from seeing the evidence for himself. "They look--"

"Like Dean's eyes," Samael finished with a wistful smile. "I know. When he took his Grace back, Mikha's wings had changed from scarlet and copper to match my eyes. Cas thinks he did it on purpose as a sign that I was really welcomed back into the Host."

"Cas?" Sam asked, then blinked as he caught the fleeting hint of a memory, blue eyes and amethyst wings and a sense of curiosity that bubbled and rippled beneath the features of a face he couldn't quite catch a glimpse of.

"Castiel," Samael said, the wistful smile turning fond and tender in a way Sam recognized only too well. "You'll like him. He's kinda awkward, but he has a lot of heart, and he's willing to look past Heaven's propaganda to see you as you are instead of what he's been told you'll be."

"You're in love with him," Sam said, wonderingly. "Is that why you told me to stop beating myself up about Jess's death? Because you're in love with this angel?"

"I told you to stop doing that to yourself because it was tearing you apart," Samael disagreed. "You needed to let yourself heal from that, or it would stay beneath the surface as a festering wound that could and would be used to hurt you later. Being in love with Castiel... that came later, and it happened a lot more slowly and gradually for me than it did for him. You falling for him isn't inevitable, not like some other things, but if you give him a chance, at the very least he'll be one of the most loyal friends you could ever have."

"Could always use more friends," Sam murmured. "Even if ours do tend to wind up dead way too often."

"Hazards of the Hunter's life," Samael commiserated. "And now I should go. Dean's almost here."

"Will you come back?" Sam asked, swallowing. "After he...?"

"I'll come back," Samael promised, reaching up and stroking Sam's hair back from his face. "Don't be too angry with Dean for being a codependent moron, huh?"

"No promises on that one," Sam huffed, but smiled when Samael laughed and disappeared with a flare and flutter of those incredible wings. He was still smiling when the door burst open and Dean rushed into the room.

"Sammy?!"

"I'm right here, Dean," he said, then grunted as Dean nearly tackled him in a hug. And suddenly it hit him, really hit him, that he had been _ dead _ not too long ago, and Dean was now on borrowed time because he couldn't leave Sam that way. He gripped Dean back, hard and tight and held on. "You stupid jerk."

"Bitch," Dean mumbled back against his shoulder. "You okay? How're you feeling?"

"Fine, Dean," Sam lied and tightened his grip. "I'm fine."

**=End=**


End file.
